The metabolism of most birds requires them to consume large amounts of food in proportion to their sizes. Unless the bird is domesticated, the supply of food is not always readily available, particularly in the colder seasons. Wild birds will move from one area to the next looking for what small morsels they are able to find. Because of this behavior wild birds will, with seeming gratitude, quickly consume food provided to them by man.
From the domestic canary to the wild bird of prey, people enjoy watching and being close to birds. The desire for people to draw birds closer to their homes has led to various feeding devices. These devices range from very simple dispensers to rather complex forms aimed at being more decorative than functional.
Presently, bird feeders come in many different designs; post mounted, cantilevered from a window sill and hung from a bracket or tree. The materials include wood, glass and plastic. Most designs hold several days supply of feed. Large heavy feeders are generally post mounted. More common are lightweight feeders that can be mounted or hung by a variety of means. Some examples of bird feeders are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,269,242; 4,896,628; and 2,591,126.
All of these bird feeders share a common characteristic, the bird feeder is constructed with components specifically designed for use in a bird feeder. In particular, the food storage container for most of these bird feeders, and for conventional bird feeders in general, represents a large percentage of the materials used to make the bird feeder, the size of the container/product being sold and necessarily the cost of the bird feeder.
There is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,732,112 a bird feeder that uses a common screw neck container such as 3-liter plastic soft drink bottle. The bird feeder consists of a screw necked feed container, an annular connecting member, a conduit that controls the flow of feed, a feed cup, an internal hood to prevent seed from overflowing the feed cup, and a perch. The conduit, feed cup and annular member are adhesively secured, integrally molded or otherwise fastened to each other so when the annular member is screwed onto the necked end of the container, bird feed automatically flows into the feed cup. The internal hood protects the cup from the elements and the perch is located about the cup so birds can alight on the perch while feeding.
This bird feeder design is limited to using those containers that have a screw top neck because a screwed connection is used to connect the conduit, annular member and feed cup to the feed container. There are, however, a number of throw-away plastic containers that do not have screw top necks that are commonly found in households. These container are commonly used for milk, orange juice, water, many clumping cat litters, as well as containers in which bird seed is sold. Further, screw top containers fall into a category of containers where state governments, such as Maine and Massachusetts, have implemented laws and regulations for their sale and disposal. For example, the container is sold with a deposit required thereby encouraging consumers or others to return the containers back to a store to get back the deposit.
The above described bird feeders, and conventional bird feeders in general, have a fixed size design (e.g., fixed size feed tray) so they have no real capability or flexibility to be re-configured or re-sized by the consumer after being purchased. In addition, the feed containers for conventional bird feeders are fixed capacity containers. Thus, a consumer has no way to control the types of birds being attracted by changing the size of the container and/or the size of the feeding tray after purchasing the bird feeder.
In today's society, because of the quantity and types of materials (e.g., plastic bottles, etc.) being used in households and because of the concern with disposal of these materials, there are programs being put in or already in place to recycle materials particularly plastic bottles. However, it is also desirous to adapt materials or products produced for one purpose (e.g., milk, orange juice, and water containers) to other uses. Adapting materials or products for additional uses reduces the amount of materials that have to be disposed off and/or recycled.
Therefore, it is an object of the present invention to provide an improved bird feeder where the size of the feed storage container and the feed tray is selectable and adjustable by the user.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a feed tube that interconnects to the storage container by engaging interior surfaces in the neck of the container and that detachably interconnects to the feed tray and more particularly a feed tube that is detachably interconnected to the storage container.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a bird feeder where the feed tube and feed tray are secured to the feed storage container without using a plastic container having a threaded neck.
It is yet a another object of the present invention to provide a bird feeder that re-uses plastic containers found in households as the feed or food storage container.
It is yet a further object of the present invention to provide a bird feeder which is adaptable to use feed trays of different configurations and sizes.
It is still yet another object of the present invention to provide a bird feeder where the feed tray can be secured to multiple feed storage containers.
It is still yet a further object of the present invention to provide a bird feeder that is simple to use and inexpensive.